Little things matter in Great Lakes beach, water pollution

Monday

May 19, 2014 at 7:00 AM

By Jim.Hayden@hollandsentinel.com(616) 546-4274

The strong winds along the Lake Michigan shore didn’t stop Catherine Page of Saugatuck from hitting the beach on Saturday. Among the tourists snapping pictures of the white caps, Page carried a white plastic bag that billowed in the breeze and wore rubber gloves as part of the annual cleanup at Oval Beach.“This is my first year. I just showed up and they gave me a bag and gloves,” she said as she picked up small plastic rings and pop tops from the sand.New studies point to the source of all that beach debris and to a larger problem with small pieces of plastic in the water.On the beachTimothy Hoellein, assistant professor of biology at Loyola University in Chicago, analyzed the waste picked up during Adopt-a-Beach volunteer cleanups at five Lake Michigan beaches, including West Side County Park in Allegan County.The other sites were North Avenue Beach in Chicago, Marquette Park Beach in Gary, Ind., Sand Bay Beach No. 1 in Door County, Wisc. and Sleeping Bear Dunes in Leelanau County.The detailed data showed litter on the beaches themselves come from the people who use the beach, not from offshore sites or rivers.“Most of the garbage is coming from the people on the beach,” Hoellein said during a webinar last month sponsored by the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a group that promotes education to protect and restore the Great Lakes.At West Side County Park beach, 60 volunteers collected 3,234 pieces of trash totaling 42 kilograms — about 92 pounds.At North Avenue Beach, 1,817 volunteers collected 172,257 pieces of litter totaling 2,497 kilograms — about 5,500 pounds.At all the beaches, the bulk of the pollution was either linked to food or smoking related.At Oval Beach on Saturday, Pam Lee picked up lots of plastic caps, straws and lids.“It’s a lot of junk that’s washed up,” she said.Hoellein’s study recommends more signs about the problems of littler and more sites for disposal, including ash trays.“Not all the material is making it into the right place, that is, the trash receptacle,” he said.He also said more studies need to be done on beach litter.“We have some more information to consider and more data to collect,” he said.In the waterWhile volunteers can pluck debris left on the beaches, a new threat from tiny plastic beads is on the rise in the water.“What we find on the beach is closely linked to what we find in the water,” said Sherri A. Mason, associate professor of chemistry at the State University of New York at Fredonia.Her research has found increasing “mircoplastic” pollution throughout the Great Lakes. These plastic beads are less than 5 millimeters in size and round.The sheer number of plastic specks in some samples hauled from Lake Erie, the shallowest and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes, were higher than in comparable samples taken in the oceans.Also, while it's unknown where the ocean plastic came from, microscopic examination of Great Lakes samples has produced a smoking gun: many particles are perfectly round pellets. The scientists suspect they are abrasive “micro beads” used in personal care products such as facial and body washes and toothpaste.“Ultimately, the plastic particles in the Great Lakes come from consumer products,” Mason said at the April webinar.A more complicated question is whether the particles are soaking up toxins in the water, potentially contaminating fish that eat them — and sending them up the food chain.Lorena Rios Mendoza, a chemist with the University of Wisconsin-Superior, said lab examination had detected two potentially harmful compounds in the Lake Erie plastic debris: PAHs, which are created during incineration of coal or oil products; and PCBs, which were used in electrical transformers and hydraulic systems before they were banned in 1979. Both are capable of causing cancer and birth defects.The plastic acts like sponges for those chemicals, Mason said. Research shows the chemicals do get into saltwater fish, she added.“It’s not rocket science to think that if it happens in the ocean, it’s happening here,” she said.Mason said that redesigning municipal wastewater treatment plants to filter out micro beads is not practical. The best approach, she said, is to stop production of beads in the first place.A Michigan lawmaker has proposed to do that.Terry L. Brown, a Democrat from Pigeon in the Thumb area, introduced a bill in September to ban the addition of plastic particles to personal care products. The bill remains in the Committee on Regulatory Reform.— The Associated Press contributed to this report. Follow Jim Hayden on Twitter@SentinelJim.